May 4th

Yesterday, we spent a lot of time at PAHS. We sat in on lectures about medical ethics and antibody structure and function in B cell-mediated immunity. We also joined the students in their practical session demonstrating a couple antibody-antigen agglutination and precipitation tests used in the laboratory diagnosis of strep throat and syphilis. Today it seemed like the students were struggling a bit with the information presented in the B cell-mediated immunity lecture. The material was very dense and memorization-intensive and it was clear that the students were having a hard time paying attention. We have no particular expertise with immunology, but we recognized a lot of the information from some of our undergraduate microbiology courses. We could imagine how difficult it must be for the medical students seeing it for the first time. It was surprising how much detail the students were expected to learn, because a lot of the details seemed irrelevant to a medical practice.

 After classes were over at 4pm, three of the students took us out to play snooker. It was a lot of fun to see and join in with some of the things that the students do in their spare time.

We have already been able to help a few students understand certain concepts when they were confused, which is really exciting because it means we are on the right track. For the next week, starting tomorrow (Sunday), we will be able to sit in on the students’ PBLs allowing us to fully understand the students’ learning objectives and hopefully be more helpful in mentoring. Tomorrow, after popular request, we will be giving the students a presentation about our lives at UBC, Vancouver and Canada.